In lieu of reading about projectile point typology

[huinare]

- Watching Tibetan sky burials on youtube totally counts as doing anthropology homework, right?

- Huzzah, new artist!crush. Lucy Nurnberg.

Geography of Death III

- I've been considering the nature of some of Tolkien's inventions I hadn't much thought about before, e.g. Balrogs. 

For someone who is mainly interested in darker characters, I've never found the Balrogs particularly compelling so I've generally ignored them.  Now that I've started to ask what on earth a Balrog is, I find this is puzzling.  At any rate, it's puzzling for me given the various strictures my interpretation of Arda's physical and metaphysical properties puts on these matters. 

I could interpret Balrogs the same way I interpret Ulmo's Maiar, as entities who are so emotionally/spiritually attached to their own element that they're become predispositioned to it and can't exist in any other type of physical state.  That's all well and good until I consider how one goes about "killing" such a being, as Balrogs seem a bit prone to being killed.  One can't kill a malleable amalgamation of flame.

The killing thing I've addressed with Draugluin and the dragons by conceiving of them as the results of quasi-sorcerous, quasi-scientific programs to bind Maiar to the frames of creatures.  Somewhat the same as Melkor himself, these Maiar have been "distilled" into something other than themselves (Draugluin into sentient, mortal offspring--dragons into the indefinite maintenance of a massive organism that is technically impossible)--so that, when their forms are killed, their spirits no longer have enough of themselves to hold onto and patch back together into a new incarnation.  If I take the same tack with Balrogs, envisioning them as being chained to solid forms, that brings up the annoying yet very interesting question of what kind of weird biochemical things would have to go on to sustain a burning body.  Way out of my league with that one there, yet that's kind of the way I'm leaning because it would be fairly creepy and horrific as well as an intellectual challenge.

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

Well, if you agree with the conception that a balrog is a body of living flame with a corporeal structure, then you also have to face the basic stricture that its' body cannot be consumed by fire even though it is made of flame.

Kayelle Allen has an interesting structure for her Sempervians - that when they die and are reborn, their cells duplicate and self-destruct almost simultaneously. In essence the body dies and cell A dies at the same moment that new cell A-1 is ready to take its place. This leads to elevated body temperatures and a painful rebirth for them as their bodies self-destruct and regenerate simultaneously; i.e. high levels of heat generated by the old cells as they self-destruct. Maybe hot enough to support flames? Whew! But I can see it working in the case of balrogs (to return to the appropriate uni and away from the Tarthian Empire).

- Erulisse (one L)

[wheelrider.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's a very interesting question. Maybe the body is some kind of small-scale nuclear fission generator/container?

[dwimordene-2011.livejournal.com]

One can't kill a malleable amalgamation of flame.

*Feanor locks and loads water balloon shotgun.* "Says who?"

;-)

[ladybrooke]

Well, considering that I've attempted to pass "Thinking about hobbits" as anthropology related, Tibetan sky burials should count.

I would comment on balrogs, but my brain quit working about 1 sentence in. Though, if they were like Ulmo's Maiar, and couldn't exist in a element other than fire, couldn't they be killed by water? (This is more based on my long held little crack fic of Luna Lovegood forcing a balrog into a lake than any real scientific thought.)